Tony Sidaway wrote:
Tony Sidaway said:
Angela said:
If anyone else would like to add to these comments, please do so at http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/CheckUser so that decisions can be made about how this feature should be used, and who should be able to use it.
Thanks. I've outlined my thoughts in a section titled (appropriately) "At discretion of arbcom, subject to veto".
..or would if I could!
I get a maintenance lock right now.
Here's the text:
At discretion of arbcom, subject to veto
All the gubbins seems to me to be a symptom of our understandable suspicion about abuse of this feature. The best solution to me seems to be to place this feature at the discretion of the arbitration apparatus of each individual Wiki, subject to veto, separately, by the board and Jimbo. Power to flip the appropriate bits to grant or revoke the ability to use this feature should continue to reside with whoever has it now, who as de facto custodian of user privacy would have an absolute veto. Arbcom should also be responsible for ensuring that the feature is used only according to its instructions. The log of all accesses of this feature (when used and by whom) should be public if possible. Further information should not be made available but should be available by a report run by the developers on request of arbcom. User:Tony Sidaway 15:30, 28 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Hoi, Some big projects have an arbitration committee some do not. On the Dutch wikipedia a user who vehemently denied he used a particular sock puppet, but who had a history of using sock puppets was banned because he was not believed and, because the nl:wikipedia was denied to have the CheckUser tool used in a timely fashion. The user is banned and will propably not be back for some time because of it.
Blanket policies that expect that an arbitration committee exists are stupid when there is no such thing. Denying the use of the tool results result in a situation does hurt a project. When a user is openly accused of using specific sock puppets, and when this user openly denies this accusation, NOT using the tool denies this user a proper investigation and as a result may be convicted because of an honest belief that he is guilty as charged. It would have been much better if the tool had proven either that the user is propably guilty or that it is inconclusive.
Without some "public" people who can be asked to perform this investigation, you discriminate against the smaller projects. This does result in situations that are worse than the perceived invasion of privacy. People can be and are judged to use sock puppets with or without the aditional proof that CheckUser supplies. If this is what we want than by all means restrict it to arbitration commissions.
Thanks, GerardM